1. Which bird is the symbol of the RSPB? AN AVOCET

2. Which racecourse is on the South Downs between Portsmouth and Brighton?

GOODWOOD

3. What made Milwaulkee famous? BREWING

4. In TV cartoons, who did Pixie and Dixie continually torment? MR JINKS

5. What crime in America have Charles Guiteau and Leon Czolsosz got in common?

ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENTS

6. Minsk is the capital city of which European country? BELARUS

7. Which poison (and heart drug) is obtained from the foxglove plant? DIGITALIS

8. Which cigarettes used to have a picture of ‘Old Joe’ on the packet? CAMEL

9 When might it be possible to see ‘Bailey’s Beads’? DURING A SOLAR ECLIPSE

10 A number of English football grounds have a Kop End with steep terraces.

The word is derived from a word for an isolated hill - in what language?

DUTCH / AFRIKAANS

11 At which film festival is the Golden Bear awarded? (The bear is the city’s symbol)

BERLIN

12 Which Greek philosopher was condemned to death and made to drink hemlock?

SOCRATES

13 Which 18th century poem was used by Beethoven in his 9th Symphony?

‘ODE TO JOY’

14 Who were the two stars of the film ‘The Bucket List’? (2-part answer) MORGAN

FREEMAN and JACK NICHOLSON

15 In which northern Scottish castle were Madonna and Guy Ritchie married? SKIBO

16 If a German car has the word ‘Kompressor’ on it, what does it mean? TURBO /

TURBOCHARGED

17 What is gneiss ? A TYPE OF (metamorphic) ROCK

18 Who wrote the screenplay for the film ‘Shirley Valentine’? WILLIE RUSSELL

19 Aided by the now-neglected Rosalind Franklin, what code did Francis Crick and

James Watson decipher? DNA

20 What language does the word ‘yoghurt’ come from? TURKISH

21. Where is ‘The Honest Toun’ in Scotland? MUSSELBURGH

22. In World War 2, what did airmen call their inflatable life jacket, after a

pneumatic blonde actress? MAE WEST

23. From which particularly odd source is the exclusive Sumatran coffee Kopi

Luwak obtained? FROM THE BACKSIDE OF A CAT – it eats the beans and

they are ‘processed’

24. In 1995, Mississippi was the last American state to officially abolish what?

SLAVERY

25. In 1869, what famous set of information did Dmitri Mendeleev produce?

THE PERIODIC TABLE OF ELEMENTS

26. Who was the first non-European to win the Tour de France? GREG LEMOND (USA)

27. In ‘The Simpsons’, who is the school caretaker? GROUNDSKEEPER WILLIE

28. How many countries border the Baltic Sea? NINE

29. What is the French drink Calvados made from? APPLES

30 Found in front of large country houses, what was a sunken ditch and wall

called? It kept animals from the garden while allowing views beyond it A ‘HAHA’

31 Who wrote the children’s Christmas-time story of the ‘Tailor of Gloucester’?

BEATRIX POTTER

32 Which Scottish football team are nicknamed ‘The Bully Wee’? CLYDE

33 Born in Pittenweem, who was called ‘the 6th Rolling Stone’ and played on many

of their hit records, but was considered too conventional to appear on stage?

IAN STEWART

34 Which old Scottish poem begins ‘The King sits in Dunfermline toun, drinking the

blude-red wine’ THE BALLAD OF SIR PATRICK SPENS

35 Next to which UK city would you cross the Avon Gorge on the Clifton

Suspension Bridge? BRISTOL

36 If you have two X chromosomes, what are you? FEMALE

37 In which decade were the books in the Lord of the Rings trilogy first published?

THE 1950s

38 Ada Lovelace, probably the world’s first computer programmer, was the

daughter of which famous poet? LORD BYRON

39 In olden times, in which months in general were you told to avoid eating

oysters? MONTHS WITH NO ‘R’ IN THEIR NAME / SUMMER/ WARM MONTHS

40 What was Istanbul called before it was called Constantinople? BYZANTIUM